Sylvia Snowden was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1942, and spent her childhood in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the age of 14, she and her family moved to Washington, D.C.. Snowden studied in the art department at Howard University (Washington, D.C.) under James Porter, Lois Mailou Jones, James Wells, and David C. Driskell, receiving her B.A. in 1963 and her M.A. in 1965. Snowden has a certificate from Académie de la Grande Chaumière (Paris, France, 1963), and received a scholarship at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, ME, 1964). On the recommendation of her close friend and mentor E.T.C. White, Snowden went to Australia for a year-long residency in 1975. Snowden has taught at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), Howard University (Washington, D.C.) and Yale University (New Haven, CT). In 2023 Snowden’s work was featured in Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70, Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK) and Fondation Vincent van Gogh (Arles, France). In 2022, Snowden’s show Shell; Glimpses was the featured inaugural solo exhibition at Rubell Museum DC (Washington, D.C.). In 2018, Snowden’s work was featured in the landmark exhibition Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960-Today at the National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.). Snowden has also exhibited at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.); The Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.); Montclair Art Museum (Montclair, NJ); Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD); Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY); The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.); The Heckscher Museum of Art (Huntington, NY); and the National Archives for Black Women’s History (NABWH) of the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site (MAMC), (Washington, D.C.). In 2021 Snowden was awarded the first edition of the Spirit Now London Acquisition Prize. Snowden’s works are held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Rubell Museum (Washington, D.C. / Miami, FL), Fitzwilliam Museum at University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK), and the Rachofsky Collection (Dallas, TX), among others. Her works have been shown globally in Chile, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, Australia, the Bahamas, France, Mexico, Italy, and Japan. Sylvia Snowden is represented by Franklin Parrasch Gallery.

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Sylvia Snowden: Shell, Glimpses, is on view at Franklin Parrasch Gallery, 19 East 66 Street, Floor Four, New York, NY, from November 9–December 15, 2023. A reception for the artist will take place Thursday, November 9 from 5-7pm. A fully-illustrated catalogue, published by American Art Catalogues on the “Shell, Glimpses” series, accompanies the exhibition. Appointments to view the exhibition during its run are not required but encouraged, and may be made by using the Schedule Viewing button above. For further information, please contact the gallery at info@franklinparrasch.com or (212) 246-5360.